Biography

Early life

Rush spent his childhood fascinated by Marcel Proust and Batman comics.[] He was one of the first students of UCLA's film program, and, after graduation, Rush worked to create television programs for the United States military showcasing the nation's involvement in the Korean War. While he agreed with the military's involvement in the region, Rush's participation in this largely symbolic conflict can be seen as a defining event for the director who later explained:

"

There's a recurring theme that I keep getting attracted to in film. . . . Being unable to accept truth, we have a tendency to accept systems, and to believe in a series of learned homilies and arbitrary rituals of good and evil, right and wrong. Magic, king, country, mother, God, all those burning truths we got from our early bathroom training from bumper stickers and from crocheted pillow cases. When it's right to kill. When it's not right to kill. Under what circumstances. Arbitrary rules invented for the occasion. And we really dedicate ourselves to them ferociously. And they tend to obscure any real human feeling or any real morality that might emerge to substitute for it.[]

"

After his propaganda work, Rush opened a production company to produce commercials and industrial films.

Rush's next movie, in 1974, was Freebie and the Bean. For the most part, Freebie was critically panned; however, it was enormously popular with audiences, grossing over $30 million at the box office.

The Stunt Man

In 1981, Truffaut was asked "Who is your favorite American director?" He answered, "I don't know his name, but I saw his film last night and it was called The Stunt Man."[5] The film, which took Rush nine years to put together,[] was a slapstick comedy, a thriller, a romance, an action-adventure, and a commentary on America's dismissal of veterans, as well as a deconstruction of Hollywood cinema. The film also features Rush's typical protagonist, an emotionally traumatized male who has escaped the traditional frameworks of society only to find his new world (biker gangs in Hells Angels on Wheels, hippies in Psych-Out) corrupted by the same influences. The Stunt Man won Rush Oscar nominations for best director and best script.

Later career

Rush did not direct another film for fourteen years -- 1994's critically panned Color of Night. Afterward, Rush retreated from the world of commercial cinema. As Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times wrote, Rush's career seems to be "followed by the kind of miserable luck that never seems to afflict the untalented."[6]